Chatham County, North Carolina is a lovely rural environment, just perfect for artists to create and show their work. Chatham's visual and performing artists offer unique authentic creations, just minutes from the Triangle, Triad and Southern Pines communities.
Come experience our creativity!
*Copyright of Forrest C. Greenslade, PhD

Friday, August 31, 2012

Len Jacobs will display his life’s collection
of nature and travel photographs at his home studio during the 20th
Chatham Studio Tour the first two weekends in December, but these visions are
serendipitous.

Chatham County photographer Len Jacobs

When Len Jacobs was a young child in the
1920s in the Harlem district of New York City, it was evident that he had some
sort of vision problem. “My parents had a small shop there, which went belly
up, and we had to move to Brownsville Brooklyn to my mom’s family home,” Jacobs
remembers. “They had a two-family house, with a store underneath.” In the
store, his grandfathermade ladies coats
and gave Len’s dad a job. “His dad had to learn how to use a sewing machine,
and to design clothing,” Jacobs' recalls. His vision problems increased, and
when he was three years old, Len’s folks finally found an optometrist in
Hackensack New Jersey, where they learned he had only 7% vision. The problem
was spreading to the extent that "I might even go blind,” Jacobs stresses.
“I probably couldn’t even go to school,”

Fortunately, there was a Sight Conservation
Class available in the New York City Public Schools.“It was K through 6th grade, and the teacher
understood kids with visual problems as well as their needs” Jacobs says. “We
had special pencils, large print books, matte paper whilephysical activity was prohibited.” It was
thought that Jacobs’ visual problems made him susceptible for a possible
retinal detachment.

I

n Junior high school there was also a Sight
Conservation Class an hour’s double trolley ride away. Despite the school’s
prohibition against physical exertion, Len and his visually impaired classmates
played punchball, a street game combining the elements of handball, stickball
and baseball, at lunch hour. In high school, he became even more physically active.
“I had no problems with my eyes, and even began thinking of becoming a
PhysicalEducation teacher, he notes.

Jacobs pursued this goal at NYU School of
Education, received a BS in Education in 1948, and an MA in Health Education
and Administration a year later. However, when he started looking for a job in
the New York City public school system, his old vision problems came to the
fore again. “You had to have 20/30 eye sight to get a license to teach Phys
Ed,” Jacobs laments, “therefore I failed the medical exam.”

The diagnosis was a type of astigmatism
creating an elongation of the eyeball,which might make him a candidate for a retinal detachment.Jacobs filed a series of appeals with the
school system and the New York State Commissioner of Education. He had
examinations by prominent ophthalmologists, who documented that the previous
diagnosis was in error. He waited for the authorities to respond. In the mean
time he and his wife Doris relocated to Elmira, NY and Washington, DC, where he
found various jobs. Finally, in 1951 Len Jacobs received licenses to teach high
school biology, high school physical education and elementary school in New
York City. Finding an actual job was still a challenge, but he landed a
position as an Attendance Officer where enjoyed a 35 year career while he
became a Certified Social Worker. After a competitive exam, he became licensed
and was appointed as a District Supervisor of Attendance in the New York City
School system Bureau of Attendance. Of course he had many educational and
societal interesting experiences. “One day, I had to visit John Gotti’s home to
find out why his kid was absent from school,” he quips.

Jasper National Park; Alberta, CanadaPhoto by len Jacobs

Jacobs' family life, with four children, was
the foundation for his avocation as a photographer. In the summer, we had more
time than money,” he laughs. “We started taking little camping trips for family
fun.” He, of course, took vacation photos. “I wasn’t a very good photographer,”
he admits, “so I began to take courses and to study books on photography while
riding the Long Island Railroad each day to work.” He joined local camera clubs
to hone his skills. He began to share his photos, taken from larger and larger
trips to state and national parks all across the country and in Canada, with
audiences throughout the greater New York City area. He has won numerous awards
and recognition. The one he is most proud of ,however, was his "Ice
Pattern" at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art,Photography as an Art Form.

Now in retirement here in North Carolina, Len
Jacobs continues to share his life’s catalog of photographic experiences. He
has served as President of the Nassau County Camera Club on Long Island as well
as President of Chapel Hill Camera Club. In the past he was Director of the
Southeastern Council of Camera Clubs Convention. He has presented multiple
projector slide shows with music and poetry and special audio-visual
techniques. He still judges photo competitions and lectures on "photo
composition." He recently began to transfer the images captured in his
myriad of slides to digital files, and printing them for people to enjoy in
their own homes. “I really enjoy it when people share my precious visions,”
Jacobs emotes.

On the inside jacket flap of his book
"Birds I've Seen" the following is written, "There is something
inherently special about Len's photography. These photos illustrate that
photography performed with such care and precision, with such love and respect,
with such skill in the use of camera tools, can be an art form for all to share
and enjoy."

The irony of it all is, that a man who was
told to avoid physical activity, and that at the age of three might soon be
blind, has used his camera to record and share with others some of the visual
music of our beautiful world.

Len Jacobs is one of the many
regionally and nationally recognized artists and fine crafts people who will
open their studios the first two weekends in December at the 20th
Annual Chatham Studio Tour (
http://www.chathamartistsguild.org/about/details.html ). Visitors from all
around enjoy Chatham’s rural beauty and share with the members of the Chatham
Artists Guild in the creative process. It is a holiday tradition, and an
opportunity to purchase unique original
art.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Chatham County North Carolina's Pittsboro has some wonderful parks and recreation facilities. The Mary Hayes Barber Park, just north of town off Route 15/501, is a delightful spot for sports and kid's play.

Parks planner Paul Horne, when laying out the park, brought in an assemblage of large rocks. He had them laid out in a serpentine arrangement, as a containing wall for a garden just behing the soccer field. In his mind's eye, Horne saw a giant dragon frolicking among the grasses and flowers.

Horne inspired Chatham artists Jonathan Davis, Joe Kenlan and Forrest Greenslade to transform the formidable wall of rocks into an imposing dragon for kids to enjoy.

Sculptor and painter Greenslade first measured the "head stone" and welded a base for the armiture, the skeletal structure that underpinns a sculpture.

Stone mason Joe Kenlan drilled holes into the large very hard rock, and fastened the "lower jaw" to the rock with bolts.

Greenslade then began creating the armature from hardware cloth and chicken wire. He incorporated a red tongue that he had fabricated from sheet steel.

Horne, Kenlan and Greenslade then mixed a composite material from cement, peat moss and an acrylic fortifyer. His procedures are published on his website.They plastered it over the the wire armiture. Horne added spines, using slate tiles rescued from on old building.

They inserted class eyeballs that had been created by glass artist Jonathan Davis.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Local writer John Keith will read from his latest book, "Canebrake Beach" at McIntyre's Bookstore in Fearrington Village on Friday, August 24 at 2:00 p.m.

"Canebrake
Beach" is a novella and short story collection that explores friendships,
relationships, and conflicts of white and black Southerners at various
intervals over a span of seventy years. Four tenant families, some black
and some white, lived on the farm owned by the author's family when he was a
child. Although no one who grew up on the farm was active in the civil
rights movement except for him, in "Canebrake Beach" he imagines what
might have happened to members of similar black and white families as they
progressed from the Jim Crow era and beyond.

.

John
Matthew Keith is a retired Episcopal minister who has lived in Fearrington
Village, North Carolina with his wife Rilla for over five years. He began writing fiction
as a student at Duke University where he was awarded the Anne Flexner Memorial
Prize (presented by William Styron). Anne Tyler was a student in the
creative writing class taught by Dr. William Blackburn when John was the
teaching assistant. Although his secular stories, like "Canebrake
Beach", have been published in magazines and periodicals over the years,
his most recently published books focused on spirituality: "Complete
Humanity in Jesus: A Theological Memoir" (2009) and "True Divinity in
Christ: A Testimony of Faith and Hope with Four Short Stories" (2010).

"Canebrake Beach" was published simultaneously as an e-book and in paper.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Fiber
artist Christie Minchew (www.christieminchew.com) says, “I have
the good fortune of living in an area that is rich with talented artists.” She
now has added her own artistic vision and skills to those of members on the
Chatham Artists Guild http://www.chathamartistsguild.org/), and will open
her studio the first two weekends in December at the 20th Annual
Chatham Studio Tour. Visitors to Minchew’s studio will enjoy her unique soft
sculptural creations. “I thrive on creativity - mine and others', she notes.
“For my own art, I tend to be drawn to media and objects that allow me to build
with my hands.” Minchew currently is using wool and silk fiber, cloth, yarns,
thread, wire, paper and other things in processes including wet-felting, dyeing,
weaving, stitching, and anything else she can find useful.

Christie Minchew in her Chatham County Studio

Christie
Minchew comes to her eclectic adaptability genetically. “I was a Navy brat, and
moved a lot until I was nine,” she reflects. “My mom was frugal and creative”,
she reminisces. “If she wanted something for the house or for us, she’d figure
out how to make it herself.”Christie
joined in her mother’s projects, and developed skills for working with her
hands at an early age. “I didn’t really ever play with dolls, she recalls. “I
made rooms in which they could live in style.” Already drawn to color, Minchew
brightly painted the inside of her closets. She constructed purses from
cardboard, and her mother taught her to sew.

Later
living in the DC area, her father stationed at the Pentagon, Christie enrolled
in the School of Architecture at Virginia Tech. For an architecture statement
project, she partially designed and constructed a weaver’s loom – It took her
five years – It now lives in her Chatham studio.

She
graduated with a specialization in Landscape Architecture, and for about a year
and a half worked as a landscape architect in Richmond. In the 1980s, a
downturn in the economy prompted a significant change in Christie’s life path.
She talked herself into a job as a System Engineer at IBM, providing technical
sales support. After several years, she moved to sales, capitalizing on her
natural skills in relationship marketing of “big computers”. Her over 20 year
career associated with IBM found her living in California, and finally in
Raleigh. In 2001, she left the corporate life.

She
craved a less corporate personal look, and designed and hand made a purse.
Friends encouraged her to make more. She started participating in craft shows.
She recalls, “One day in a fabric store, the proprietor noticed one of my hand
made purses and asked if I could make patterns.”This launched a new business, “Sweetbriar
Studio”, a sewing pattern business that continues today.

Minchew’s latest transformation resulted from
her desire to transition from fine craft to works more creatively artistic. “In
about 2008, I wanted to start making table runners, but was looking for a way
to make them not only decorative, but more free-form,” she states. “While on
vacation, I was thumbing through a magazine and noticed an advertisement for a
"wet-felted" garment. When I got home, I taught myself to wet-felt.”
As a result of getting back into sewing and then working with felting,
Christie’s latent addiction to all things fiber was reignited.

Sculptural fiber art inspired by galactic image

Minchew’s
unique fabric creations are characterized by dimensionality, pattern and
texture, and often inspired by the microscopic and telescopic patterns in the
natural world. It is, as she puts it, “organicy looking”. “I like this
counterpoint to the technical control of the corporate world, or even the
pattern business.” The wet felting process is exciting to her. “The material
transforms before your eyes,” she emotes. “There is this wonderful balance
between artistic control and serendipity.”

Christie Minchew is one of the many
regionally and nationally recognized artists and fine crafts people who will
open their studios the first two weekends in December at the 20th
Annual Chatham Studio Tour (http://www.chathamartistsguild.org/about/details.html). Visitors from all around enjoy Chatham’s rural beauty
and share with the members of the Chatham Artists Guild in the creative
process. It is a holiday tradition, and an opportunity to purchase unique original
art.

About Forrest

"I was that kid you could always find turning over rocks in streams, looking for what wonders nature would disclose to me," says Greenslade. His curiosity about the natural world led him to a life as scientist and organizational executive. Now in retirement, Dr. Greenslade is again doing what he did when he was ten years old -- turning over rocks and sculpting and painting the wonders that nature discloses.
"I lived a serious life, but now in my dotage, I am just letting the kid out again," Greenslade smiles.
"It's more fun than an old guy deserves."
My wife Carol-Ann and I live in Fearrington Village, where we host The Artist's Garret AirBNB over my Organic Forrestry Studio.